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Stimulus not even filling potholes.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  July 19th, 2010 at 03:30 PM  | 

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If you’re like me and Ed Driscoll, you’re the sort who would think that if we were going to spend almost a trillion dollars that we don’t actually have on a ‘stimulus program’ then we’d at least spend it on infrastructure.  Well, more accurately, you’re sort who hopes that we’d spend it on infrastructure, because if you’re like me and Ed Driscoll you’d be well aware that once the Beltway Establishment gets a hold of an idea it mutates into a horrific, expensive mess.

The Beltway Establishment got a hold of the idea.

Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.

In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as “poor man’s pavement.” Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel.

Let me put this situation into perspective for you.

Funny how that works out, isn’t it? – the way that “them that has, got,” I mean. You’d almost be ready to believe that some of this stimulus money was distributed with a look at the 2008 election returns.

But that’s just crazy talk.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

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  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine
  • Deskpilot

    http://philhardwickblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/2008_election_map-counties.jpg

    Just askin’

    Not a lot of red on their web GOV’T page http://www.co.stutsman.nd.us/

    Broadband is a PRIME link on http://www.coshoctoncounty.net/

  • http://Blackberrybear.etsy.com knitwit

    but he didn’t say he would treat them all equally! His idea of EQUAL is taxes for ALL, especially the ones who voted for his opponent, and PAYBACK/MONEY for the ones who voted FOR him!

  • BA Cyclone

    egads.

    Even as someone whom is quite well versed in gravel and other types of secondary roads, I cannot even fathom the PAIN such a process would entail.

    They can’t even find good infrastructure projects to screw up – which is a picture of the “efficiency” of the government machine.

    There are literally 1000′s of bridges on secondary roads all over my state that no longer carry seasonal farmer-to-market traffic (read: FOOD) safely or legally.

    Yet the feds can find some mythic purpose of national interest in potential turtle pedestrians. Nice.

  • SeeBS

    n/t

  • Ausonius

    About 20 years ago Edward Luttwak wrote an essay in “Commentary” magazine (A Conservative Jewish journal) on the signs of a declining civilization.

    The inability to preserve and improve infrastructure was called a disturbing symbol of a country unable to focus its resources properly, either because of incompetence, corruption, or both.

    MAObama and the Dems have the dream of reducing America to a 57th-rate country, and the dream is becoming reality.

  • johna650

    Just visited a steel supplier in Gary, Indiana (96% for Hussein, 4% for the “War Hero”). The potholes are so big you can lose an axel. One bridge is so rusted you can see daylight through the crossbeams. Guess Hussein doesn’t care much for his people in Gary. Appears to me the cash is going to the swing counties. Its obviously not going to the robots he can count on or to those he cannot. One of you political science types ought to make up a chart showing exactly where the cash went. We already know that 90% of it went to the banksters in NY, but it would be nice to see who got the rest. It would make an interesting campaign spot. In the meantime, you better recruit some friends and fill your own potholes and pave your own roads

  • cymbaline

    That was the first thing that popped into my mind upon reading this. Oh my God, I never thought Atlas Shrugged would turn out to be real.

    In other news, hundreds of tons of wheat were left to rot on train station sidings because all the railroad cars were diverted to California to carry soy beans for Kip Chalmers’ Ma.

  • mdd1956

    maybe we could try spending a little less

  • mdd1956

    maybe

  • talgus

    Nothing they have passed or ordered has not passed thru the sieve of “does this help our Dems or hurt the opposition”. Obama and his clones (czars) are going to be extremely dangerous after November.

  • chabsentia

    When the Stimulus bill was passed in February 2009 there were supposed to be shiovel ready infrastructure jobs, Instead 95% of the Stimulus money was spent on plugging Budget gaps, Medicaid, Food Stamps and Unrmployment. This is Wealth redisrtrubution and not job creation. The Goverrnment only counts you as unemployed if you are unemployed and have actively been looking for work in the last four weeks. If you count all the actual unemployed then the true rate has been 17% since August 2009. Things are going to get better because it is less than four months before the Election, The remainder of the Stimulus money will now be spent on these shovel ready jobs that were promised in February of 2009 and since the area of Construction is the highest area of Unemployment at 23% then Unemployment will go down in a large way and you will then see the actual 17% number quoted and the improvement. The gullible herd weill then go to the Polls in Novemeber and vote for a continuation of the same. I predicted the outcome in 2008 when the gullible were whining about the “last eight years of Republican rule” even though the Democrats had the Majority in Both Houses since January 20,2007. Nothing much has changed. Just look at the blogs outside of here. Just bend over.

  • BA Cyclone

    You took the discussion in an excellent direction.

    I’m always dismayed that road-replacement and general upkeep seems to be a regular excuse for raising taxes.

    Somehow, the taxes I paid and continue to pay to MAKE the road in the first place are now not good enough to maintain or replace this same road decades after it was first laid down. Even though I pay a PERCENTAGE of sales, use, and in some cases fuel purchases – inflation in these same things is still apparently not good enough for the stewards in state and federal legislatures to find funds to do these necessary functions of government.

    It is rather easy to point to all the new inventions of compulsory causes these poor stewards invent for my compulsory donations, yet the plainfully obvious and necessary functions fall into disrepair and they are all surprised it happens. We need more funds to fix them, or we’ll have to cut your fire and police services!

    Rinse. Repeat.

  • http://www.cehwiedel.com/ cehwiedel

    And building ADA ramps ? in suburban Southern California. I know because I cover three different city councils for local weekly papers. The projects that get funded are “shovel-ready” because they are part of smaller cities’ infrastructure plans and wait until money becomes available to be put out for bids. The construction companies bidding on the projects have a long and trusted history with each of the cities. The bids received are lower than in the past because those companies aren’t seeing much work building homes, or repaving driveways or resurfacing private office or retail parking lots. The cities are all on tight budgets ? some tighter than others ? but have planned for such road maintenance and can put money of their own into such projects as well.

    Don’t take this the wrong way: I do not like small cities taking handouts from the federal government. I think ARRA was a giant boondoggle larded with pork. Given the chance, I would have blocked ARRA.

    But streets ARE getting repaved.

  • acat

    a couple months ago – they re-paved two roads that, IIRC, had been the responsibility of the municipality and the county previously…

    My take is that money is fungible – and the county and muni used ARRA funds instead of their own.

    The only odd part is that neither of the roads had degraded to the point where I was expecting them to be re-done. Perhaps the muni and the county are thinking this will be the last chance to re-pave on someone elses’ dime for a while?

    Mew

  • realskinny

    FDR did exactly the same thing and did it openly. Money went for “patronage” to those districts he needed and he screwed over those carried by Reps. It was corrupt then and is corrupt now, not that it matters. The criminal congress and gangster government will carry on and the propaganda media will ignore it.

  • Achance

    The federal money goes into construction of buildings and highways and such with local match from 0 to 10 or 20%, a few as high as 50%, but that is rare. But then, once it is built, it is a state and local responsibility to maintain it. The federal highways and Interstates are a joint responibility usually.

    Consequently, since it does take local revenue to maintain infrastructure, politicians have to take responsibility for the taxation and they don’t like to. They either let it rot or raise your taxes; often they let it rot deliberately so you’ll be asking for them to fix it, for which they say they have no money without a tax increase.

    An additional dynamic, is that politicians get contributions for promising to bring home the bacon and bringing in new work and money. They get good press from the first shovel and the ribbon cutting, not so much from fixing leaking roofs and such. Alaska went on a spending and building binge in the ’70s and ’80s as oil money began to flow. With the oil price crash of the mid’80, it all came to a screeching halt. By the late ’90s, everything the State owned that couldn’t be taken care of with federal money looked like something from the last days of the old Soviet Union. There was literally grass growing through the brick pavers on the deck of the State Office Building in Juneau. There has been a recent attempt to make a dent in an estimated $1-2 Billion in “deferred” maintenance of State owned facilities, yet even with a lot of money around the last few years and the support of Governor Parnell, though not so much Palin, the Legislature has still preferred to build new rather than maintain old. And of course, when you’re building new it is usually with project labor agreements with the unions and all at Davis-Bacon wages. Anymore the D-B wages are so high that even the big, well-connected union contractors can afford very little labor, so the projects are hideously expensive and take forever to finish. Our airport here in Juneau looked like something out of the Soviet Union and the TSA security measures were a cobbled together mess, so a combination of airport receipts, local taxation and bonding, and federal construction and security money was put together for a redo and an addition; it has been going on FOREVER! There’s lots of those banners on the fence telling you how pleased and proud the unions are to be a part of it but you almost never see anyone actually working.

  • mriggio

    both interstate and secondary, that have had miles and miles of repaving done this year, few if any that really required it, IMHO. Illinois IDOT, as with the rest of the state, resides in Dem hands, so much ARRA repaving transpires. OTOH, nearby communities are denied Federal funds for tornado damage recovery, especially since those towns are represented by a young wascally Wepublican, who pokes fun at the Propaganda Ministry’s signs…
    Cheers!

  • qixlqatl

    Here I thought I was a lone nut ;)

  • qixlqatl

    Good roads being repaved, while the ones in need of repair go completely to…well, you get the idea.

    Funny thing, it always seems to be the same two very large contractors doing all the work…….